Lifestyle

El Pasoan receives lifesaving transplant at just 30 years old

Jeannette Ventura had a heart transplant on Feb. 15, 2012. She is back at work at McDonald's where she is a manager. (Victor Calzada / El Paso Times)

Last February, Jeannette Ventura was at the brink of a death, perhaps two weeks away from a massive heart attack.

Ventura was diagnosed with end-stage heart failure due to a restrictive cardiomyopathy.

"What that means is her heart was very stiff and it was getting weaker," said Dr. Jerry Estep of the Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center at The Methodist Hospital in Houston.

In restrictive cardiomyopathy, the heart is often normal size or only slightly enlarged. However, it cannot relax normally during the time between heartbeats when the blood returns from the body. The weakening of the heart muscle causes the heart to fill poorly, squeeze poorly or both.

Ventura was flown to Houston, and on Feb. 15, 2012, she received a heart transplant.

REPORTER

Victor Martinez

"She was in and out of hospitals several times, and the doctors in El Paso were concerned about her dying from this disease, so we brought her over to our institution," said Estep, an El Paso native who is medical director of the Heart Transplant and LVAD program at the Houston hospital.

"The type of heart failure she had, her heart signs were normal but heart was very, very weak and she was at risk for abnormal heart rhythms and her risk of dying was more than 50 percent in the next several weeks. She was really in bad shape."

Ventura -- who is doing great now -- was only 30 years old.

The problem was "not from blocked arteries, which is the number one cause in the United States, not from high blood pressure, and not from a valve problem," Estep said. Ventura was born with the heart defect.

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"I didn't know I had this condition until I was 26 years old." Ventura said. "Everything felt normal until I started feeling really bad. I was really weak, dizzy and had shortness of breath all the time."

Her condition became progressively worse.

"My heart was beating fast and I couldn't breath or I couldn't walk because I was tired all the time," she said.

"Then one day, I just passed out. I had to be shocked with a defibrillator. It happened several times where my heart would stop and they had to give me CPR until my heart would beat again."

She was put on a heart transplant list, where she waited three years -- until the day after Valentine's Day 2012.

Now, she says, she's never felt better.

"I'm back at work and I'm doing a lot of things that I never thought I would do. I exercise on my treadmill every day for about an hour. I'm living a better life now."

Estep, her cardiologist, said her heart condition could affect the lungs, liver and other body systems.

"It is not 100 percent inherited," said Estep, who completed his undergraduate studies from the College of Engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1992. "It was a combination of genetics and perhaps a combination of something acquired in the environment, although we can't pinpoint it. We think there may have been a genetic predisposition."

He, too, was surprised by how young Ventura is.

"We have a number of patients who at a young age can get this type of heart condition, but the more common scenario is to get a virus and that is what affects your heart," he said. "We evaluated her for that, and she didn't have any exact virus type of cause. Sometimes toxins can do it, but that didn't seem to be the issue here, either."

Other rare causes of cardiomyopathy are related to some infiltrating diseases, but Ventura didn't seem to have a case like that.

"She may have had the onset of a weakening heart maybe months or years before, but when the heart starts to weaken it can create symptoms like fatigue or shortness of breath, which is often missed in young patients or explained by different things," Estep said.

"The doctors in El Paso did a great job of diagnosing the heart condition to where they got her to see us in Houston so we could do something about it."

No medical center in El Paso can give patients a heart transplant. Patients must travel to San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston or cities in other states.

"I see several patients a year from El Paso," Estep said. "Being born and raised in El Paso, I'm sensitive to the reality that for patients who are living in far West Texas, there's not a primary center that can offer support for patients with end-stage heart failure."

Estep has been working with different groups of doctors in El Paso to create an option for heart patients.

"Last year, we did 40 heart transplants including our heart/multi-organ transplant effort," he said. "Some patients need a heart and kidney or a heart and liver or heart and lung.

"It's tragic to die when you are young from a potentially treatable condition."

Victor R. Martinez may be reached at vmartinez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6128. Follow him on Twitter @vrmart

Watch for the symptomsSymptoms of heart failure usually develop slowly over time, though they sometimes start very suddenly and are severe. The common symptoms are:

Excessive coughing.

Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath at night, during regular activity or when lying flat.

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